


On the Way to the Wishing Well

by sophiagratia



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Depression, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Established Relationship, F/F, Femslash, Friendship, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 11:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/pseuds/sophiagratia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small study of Janet and depression.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Way to the Wishing Well

The morning light is too sharp and too clear. It’s immediate and implacable; it can’t be turned off and it can’t be denied. Janet blinks, twisting in the sheets, pulling them tight around her. Outside her window, the trees are shifting in the wind. The sun comes green and gold through their leaves, too bright, too sharp, and too close and too slow. Janet’s heart begins to pound, and she thinks: _oh, no. Not again._

Not this again: consciousness again, another day, again, this light again, another morning, to get up again and get dressed again and go to work again. Not again, not again. 

She closes her eyes and breathes slowly and pulls the sheets tight around her. If she moves slowly enough, carefully enough, she will be able to bear it. 

She feels Sam move beside her, Sam’s arm sliding around her waist, Sam’s whole body wrapping around hers. The warmth of Sam’s skin, the sleepy murmur of Sam’s voice, Sam’s lips on her shoulder. 

‘Morning,’ says Sam’s sweet, sleepy voice. Janet’s heart beats faster. _No, not again, not this again._ She didn’t use to be afraid of this. She takes Sam’s hand in both of hers, pulling Sam’s arm tight around her, holding Sam’s hand tight to her sternum. Sam, who scares her. Sam, like a lifeline she clings to. 

*

One night, late, she creeps home carefully. She does not want Cass, she does not want Sam, to know how much she has had to drink. She hears Sam’s voice, creeps, following it, toward the kitchen. 

Sam is saying, her voice queer and foreign, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I can –’ A pause. ‘No – Daniel –’ Daniel, then. Daniel? 

‘She’s like a shadow,’ Sam says, in her strange voice that Janet scarcely knows. Another pause. ‘What? I. Uh. I don’t –. Maybe.’ Pause. ‘Talk?’ A queer kind of low laugh. ‘How do you talk to a shadow?’ Pause. ‘Look, it’s late. [...] Daniel – [...] Fine. Okay. [...] You too. Night.’ 

Click. As it were. Janet doesn’t hear Sam hang up. She hears Sam sigh. She pictures her, head bowed over the table, sighing. She hesitates at the threshold; she could go to Sam, sit beside her, place her hands in Sam’s, and talk. _I’m sorry_. Or: _I love you_. Or: _I’m trying_. 

How do you talk, if you are a shadow?

She should go to Sam. Instead, she creeps upstairs. When she wakes in another cruel, cut-glass morning, Sam is not beside her.

*

She dreams of more than losing Sam. She dreams of trying to speak and finding that her mouth is full of sand; sand pours from her mouth without stopping and she chokes and wakes coughing. 

She dreams that she is made of glass and doesn’t know it until it is too late, until she tries to move and it shatters her; she watches herself shatter and thinks, _that’s got to hurt_. But it doesn’t; never does.

She dreams that her hands are poison; she tries to explain but no one believes her; but her hands are poison and they kill her patients; she tries to explain but instead everyone she knows dies under her poisoned hands. 

She dreams that she is pregnant, and she gives birth to a Cassandra fully-grown. Like her namesake, this dream-Cassandra prophesies, but the only word she can learn is _No_. She shouts it, and Janet wakes up shouting it, too. 

Sam hardly notices, anymore. Hardly wakes. Is hardly ever there.

*

She sits down for the weekly round of cross-referencing with Jacobs from psych. Her work at least is competent, proficient; she has all she needs to hand; she knows this and does it well. She watches herself from a distance, performing this work. She is idly curious at the sound of her own crisp, professional voice.

They run through their checklist; they compare charts, make notes on treatment plans. Pretending that it’s easy, they go through the terrible business of accounting for those deceased between last week and this, those lives no longer relevant in medical terms.

Even about that, Janet feels nothing. Except that it is terrible. That it should stop and never does.

They finish their work; Jacobs stands; Janet gestures him before her out of her lab. Just like every week. But as she watches him down the hall, she has, for the first time, a new thought.

‘Hey, Matthew?’ she calls. ‘Can I see you in my office for a moment?’ Quiet as usual, he only nods and follows her. She gestures him in, closes the door. She crosses her arms, looks down at the floor and eventually, back at him. He’s so still, so even. She takes a deep breath. ‘I’d like to set up an appointment.’ 

Matter-of-fact, professional, Matthew pulls his agenda from his breast pocket, clicks his pen. They’ve done this a hundred times. ‘Sure thing. Name?’

She winces. ‘... Janet Fraiser?’ It could be a joke, but it’s too much effort to laugh.

‘Ah,’ Matthew says, too kind to laugh. He slowly undoes his gesture, replacing agenda and pen. He leans on her desk. ‘What’s up, Janet?’ His soft voice has gone softer. 

‘Oh, you know.’ She doesn’t want to say. _Depression. Anxiety_. So mundane. _Suicide_. So melodramatic. _Sam_. So unspeakable. 

‘I don’t, but if you’re going to make me guess.’ He hesitates, rubs the heels of his hands together. ‘Janet, does this have anything to do with you and Carter?’

_It’s over_ , she thinks, and the thought is blunt and cold. (If she speaks, sand will pour from her mouth; if she moves, she will shatter like glass.) 

‘Okay. You don’t have to answer that. But.’ His eyes dart to the ceiling, seeking words. ‘But you should know that I consider confidentiality to have a broad remit.’ He sighs. ‘Okay. In any case, Janet, I can’t see you, at least not formally.’ 

She cannot move. She cannot speak.

‘Conflict of interest,’ Matthew says to her silence. He raises an eyebrow, leans toward her. ‘I’m your friend, Janet,’ he says gently. ‘I can’t also be your therapist. But swing by tomorrow for a quick consult, if you like, and we’ll find someone for you in town. Okay?’ She can only nod. ‘Oh-nine-hundred in my office. See you then.’ He squeezes her shoulder, lingers for a moment with his quiet smile, and walks out. 

She stands staring after him for a long while.

*

When she gets to her lab – clutching her coffee; clutching her head – Daniel is there, tinkering with things. 

‘Stop that,’ she says, more sharply than she means to. He looks up. 

‘Sorry.’

‘No. I am. Wrong side of the bed. What’s up?’

Thoughtful, cautious, but trying for casual, he says, ‘Just checkin’ on ya.’ She almost smiles. She would smile, but she thinks it would hurt. 

‘Thank you, Daniel. I’m okay. I just need to work, for now, okay?’ He nods, touches her shoulder. Daniel, who alone knows. So many things that only Daniel knows. Daniel, and, apparently, Matthew Jacobs. _The broad remit of confidentiality_ , she thinks, and it does hurt.

‘Kay,’ Daniel says, Daniel-like, and he leaves. But he comes back at the end of the day, with a too-casual ‘How’s things?’, and then, she smiles.

‘Bad,’ she says, wanly. 

‘Yeah?’ He sits, watches her.

‘You know what it’s like?’ she suddenly says. Suddenly, she wants to talk. She rushes in before she can think better of it. ‘Claustrophobia. Is what it’s like. You know, we are literally three hundred feet underground, and I never even think about it. But I think about Sam and all those secrets and all this lying, and what’s it for? Watching soldier after soldier die on my table because the Pentagon wants alien weapons?’ He winces, but she’s gotten good at lowering her voice. At keeping it down, keeping quiet, holding back. She ignores him and carries on in her harsh half-whisper. ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe I could live with it, maybe, but then I think about Sam and the secrets and the lies and – and it’s like I can’t breathe.’ She feels it now, catching up with her. Her mouth full of sand, her body like glass.

‘Let’s go get some air, then.’ 

‘Damn it, Daniel, don’t be so literal.’ But she follows him all the same, the long way up and out, and they sit in the bed of her truck, their legs stretched out, their faces tilted toward the evening sky. He was right: the wind feels good after all that concrete. All that machinery. All the weight in earth of the mountain. She closes her eyes. Daniel takes her hand; she leans against his shoulder. He’s so big. She forgets that. It makes her feel safe, how solid he suddenly feels. 

They talk into the air for a while, about inconsequential things. How Jack’s way ahead in the football pool and gloating about it. Whether SG-1 will be home for Thanksgiving, and the yearly squabble over stuffing recipes. How funny Teal’c looks on the stairmaster, whether Paul Davis is worth inviting for drinks. This, that, nothing of consequence. It’s the longest, and lightest, conversation she’s had with anyone in weeks. For a moment, she thinks, _this is like life. Life is like this, can be like this._

Abruptly, Daniel says, ‘What if you left?’ The Air Force, he means. Resign, he means. Quit. Like it hasn’t occurred to her. 

‘I would lose her.’ 

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Stop that, Daniel. Jesus.’ 

‘Sorry.’ 

‘What did she say to you?’

‘Huh?’

‘The other night. On the phone. I overheard her. She doesn’t know. What did she say?’

‘...That she’s afraid she’s losing you.’ 

Irony can be so stupid, she thinks, just before she starts to sob like a child on Daniel’s shoulder. He squeezes her hand, and lets her cry. After a long while, it evens out. She sniffles, her eyes hurt, but she thinks that it’s over, for now. 

‘Ugh,’ she says, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand. ‘I am so sick of crying.’ 

‘Can I say something?’ Daniel says. As though she could stop him. ‘I think all she wants is for you to talk to her. She’ll never ask. But she wants you to talk to her.’

‘I don’t know why that scares me so much.’ Another sob blindsides her. ‘God _damn_ it,’ she says, shaking her head. Like you kick a defective machine to get it to stop, or to start. 

‘You know Sam. She can handle a lot. But you’ve got to tell her, because she’ll never ask.’ He’s right. He’s right. She kisses his shoulder. 

‘Okay. Thanks. Oh, god.’ She sniffs, blinks against the sting in her eyes. Her throat is raw, her sinuses inflamed. She can’t cry anymore. She cries too much, and it hurts, physically. ‘Can we stay here for a bit?’ She doesn’t want to go home, not yet. 

‘As long as you want,’ Daniel says. He’s still holding her hand.

*

Eventually, she tells Sam everything. Another night, curled on the couch together under a blanket, Sam’s arm around her, Cass safely in bed (Cass more likely out the window to wherever she goes when she thinks her mother doesn’t know she’s climbed out the window), one night or another, there they are. And there is this silence between them. 

Sam never asks. Sam will never ask. So Janet tells her.

She sees no reason to start softly, so she tells Sam about why she leaves her side-arm on the base. Why she is afraid to go into the kitchen by herself. She tells Sam why she gave all her prescription pads to Warner, and invents reasons to defer pharmaceutical decisions to him. She tells Sam about the two letters stored on her laptop: the one to Hammond resigning her commission – and the other one. (She does not say: Sam, that one is addressed to you. Sam should not, she thinks, be burdened with that. Not until – not unless – she has to be.) She tells Sam why it has been so important to her that Sam legally adopt her daughter. 

Sam, to her credit, doesn’t lose it. Sam’s arms tighten around her, and Sam’s lips are soft on her forehead, and Sam says, ‘I love you,’ and Sam, holding her, is quiet for a long while. But the texture of her silence has changed. 

She tells Sam how afraid she is. ‘I’m afraid for Cassie. I’m afraid for us. Every day, every day I’m afraid someone will know, something will happen. I’m afraid for you. I’ll lose you; you’ll die off-world or someone will find out about us and you’ll disappear. I have dreams like that. Where you disappear. Into thin air. Sometimes I forget they’re not real.’ Sam is very, very still.

‘I can’t do this without you, Sam, I can’t – I can’t –’ and then she runs out of language. 

But Sam says, ‘I know, J. I know.’ Sam doesn’t understand; it’s not possible for Sam to understand, but Sam kisses her forehead and holds her close and says, ‘It’s okay. I know.’ She doesn’t, she can’t, but it feels good to hear Sam say those things, so Janet burrows closer to her.

And for once, Sam is still there when she falls asleep. And when she wakes.

*

When she wakes, the morning light is clear and cold and too close, and she goes through the familiar motions. Closes her eyes, pulls the sheets tight, rations her breath. 

Sam is beside her; Sam who scares her and Sam who holds her together. Not again, she thinks, and at the same time, pushes against the thought. This will happen. Today, tomorrow, these things happen. She is here to face them; she must face them. 

Sam is beside her. She pulls Sam around her. 

‘Morning,’ she says, against Sam’s palm. 

‘Morning,’ says Sam. Sam kisses her shoulder. Another day, again. She turns. ‘We’re going to be okay, J.,’ Sam says. _No, we’re not_ , Janet thinks. _Speak for yourself_ , Janet thinks. 

‘Say that again,’ Janet says. _I’m sorry_ , she thinks. And: _I love you_. And: _I’m trying_.

‘We’re going to be okay.’ Sam kisses her lips. If Sam says that enough times, Janet thinks, she might be able to believe it.

For now, she moves slowly and measures her breath. She stands up. It’s a start.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Patti Griffin’s song ‘[Nobody’s Crying](http://youtu.be/dGlNEbFuN9g).’


End file.
